Wow, only nine months between updates! Um, I have an excuse, guys, I was, uh…stuck in the bathroom. Yeah. No wait, I had leprosy. It was terrible. Anyway, this one was based on a conversation we had at dinner last night wherein I made a joke that my kids didn’t appreciate…
From the Fox News article: “New Wonder Woman Loses Patriotic Costume in Favor of ‘Globalized’ Duds“
The new and allegedly improved Wonder Woman (a.k.a Diana Prince), has been given a head-to-toe makeover by artist Jim Lee, replacing her signature American flag decorated briefs with skintight black pants and purging the super hero of all her trappings of Americana…
A comic book artist who has worked with DC Comics, which publishes the Wonder Woman comic books and owns her image, says the removal of the flag symbolism probably has a lot to do with international commercial intentions.
‘This new sleek and fashionable Wonder Woman will translate well to a film franchise centered on a female action hero. That wouldn’t have worked as well with the bright and flashy red, white and blue costume, and it definitely wouldn’t have played in the very lucrative international markets,’ said the artist, who wished not to be named because of ties to DC. ‘The new Wonder Woman costume looks like something you could put on Angelina Jolie, or on one of the bad guys from the Twilight saga.’
Okay, that last paragraph right there makes DC sound like the biggest bunch of idiots in the industry. It’s change for change’s sake, in the hopes of making a buck out of it. The 200+ comments tacked on to the Fox News article are on fire from fanboys and patriots alike. While I do believe Wonder Woman is overdue for an update, I think this was done poorly, for a couple of reasons. First, Jim Lee, you were my favorite X-Men artist in the 80s and 90s, but dude, this looks like something you would have designed for Rogue in 1998. Get with the 21st century. This is WONDER WOMAN, and you totally phoned it in.
Second, D.C., you are pandering to the Twihards now? I understand you need the money, but it is sad to see you seek it at the cost of your dignity.
As for all of you who have never spent money on a Wonder Woman comic in your life but are angry because she’s no longer dressed “patriotically”: yeah, she is an American icon, but she is also an illegal immigrant from an island of Amazons. You will forget this as quickly as you did Captain America’s “death”.
Finally, to anyone else even mildly worked up about this whole thing: relax. Wonder Woman’s costume is iconic. They tried this with Superman like 10 years ago, with Batman 15 years ago, and those failed terribly. The iconic stuff always comes back, because the real fans are not the tweens who show up at the box office for a movie trilogy and then go on to the next thing. They are the ones who stick around and forgive the stunts, patient in the knowledge that their beloved characters will eventually fall back into the hands of a creator who respects them. And no matter what, my daughter will never leave the house wearing anything like either of these costumes anyway, so all is well.
No, I’m not really back to updating regularly, I just had the itch to draw ’bout some football today.
This video gives a good context for my previous post. It shows why we as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints consider our temples sacred. I don’t intend to be preachy so much as helping people to understand. Enjoy!
“In the aftermath of Proposition 8, it’s open season on Mormons, and the producers of HBO’s series Big Love are in the best position to give the Mormons (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) a big slap.The series focuses on members of one of several splinter groups that have left the Mormon Church over the issue of polygamy…
Big Love is not doing anything new. Anti-Mormon groups have been describing, depicting, or showing ersatz versions of the temple ceremonies for many years. Anyone who wants to know what goes on in the temples can find out with very little effort. So why are we Mormons upset about Big Love’s foray into anti-Mormon “exposé”?
It’s offensive when believers in one religion hold up the sacred rites of another religion to public ridicule. So we’re hurt — but we’re not surprised.
Mormons have always been the exception to America’s policy of religious tolerance. Throughout our history in America, Mormons have been oppressed by government, killed or driven out by mobs, slandered, and libeled — always by fellow Americans who professed to believe in religious tolerance…
So the church’s official advice to its members is: Ignore it…
Most Mormons are seeing the Big Love temple episode in the context of the recent outpouring of hatred and bile from those who most vehemently opposed Proposition 8. Mormons have been targeted for business boycotts; some have lost their jobs because they contributed to the campaign to defend marriage.
The result is that few of us have any desire to act as the worst of our opponents have acted. After someone has boycotted a friend’s business, it makes it a bit harder for you to want to call for a boycott.
By and large, while we’d prefer that everybody handle differences of opinion peacefully, we’d rather be persecuted than be the persecutors. The few times in our history when we have departed from that principle, the results have shamed us for generations. Tolerance works better.”
Yup, I found another stupid news article about how cartoonists are drawing on eggshells when it comes to President Obama. I found their quote from Ted Rall (who inspires cartoonists everywhere by showing that even the most simple-minded buffoon who can manage to grip a pen without shoving it up his nose can become an award-winning journalist) interesting:
Rall, who is liberal, said it’s harder to take shots at Obama because he’s smart, charming and handsome, “so when you attack the personality, people suspect there’s only one reason: It’s gotta be his race. My conservative cartoonist friends find it very frustrating.”
I don’t think Rall’s released his obsequious grip from the President’s pant leg long enough to notice that some of us don’t need to stoop to racism to criticize the policies of a President who has managed to break almost all of his campaign promises within his first month in office. I, for one, have swept all the eggshells off my floor and plan to stomp around quite a bit for the next four years, regardless of any corrupt politician’s skin color.
Glenn can seem pretty buffoonish to anyone who isn’t used to him; I’ve been listening to his radio show for the last 3-4 years and he predicted our current economic crisis well before anyone else saw it coming. He lost a lot of ratings for harping on it for the last couple of years, but he knew what needed to be said. His credibility with me is as high as it gets.
“When the going gets tough, the tough go campaigning. So, almost as if he were still running for office rather than actually running an office, the president arranges a photo-op or a town-hall meeting, where, for the moment, the hopeychangey shtick still plays. ‘I have an urgent need,’ a freeborn citizen of the republic (I use the term loosely) beseeched the president in Fort Myers this week. ‘We need a home, our own kitchen, our own bathroom.’
As Michelle Malkin commented of the urgent needer: ‘If she had [had] more time, she probably would have remembered to ask Obama to fill up her gas tank, too.’ Obama took her name — Henrietta Hughes — and ordered his staff to meet with her. Hopefully, he won’t insult her by dispatching some no-name deputy assistant associate secretary of whatever instead of flying in one of the bigtime tax-avoiding cabinet honchos to nationalize a Florida bank and convert one of its branches into a desirable family residence, with a swing set hanging where the drive-thru ATM used to be…
Someday soon this inaugural Obamateur Hour (as one of my correspondents, John Gross, calls it) will end and the ‘events’ phase will begin. Back last spring, some gloomy reflections of mine on multiculturalism prompted a reader to advise me to lighten up: ‘We’re rich enough that we can afford to be stupid.’ A mere nine months later, the first part of that equation no longer seems quite so obvious…
America has a choice: It can reacquaint itself with socioeconomic reality, or it can buckle its mandatory seatbelt for the same decline most of the rest of the West embraced a couple of generations back. In 1897, troops from the greatest empire the world had ever seen marched down London’s mall for Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee. Seventy years later, Britain had government health care, a government-owned car industry, massive government housing, and it was a shriveled high-unemployment socialist basket-case living off the dwindling cultural capital of its glorious past. In 1945, America emerged from the Second World War as the preeminent power on earth. Seventy years later . . .
Let’s not go there.”
